action roleplaying game || FRostbite || october 31, 2024

senior level designer || JULY 2021 – JANUARY 2025

I joined BioWare and the Dragon Age team in summer 2021 as part of a team of level designers focused on building the exploration spaces of the game and the content that went into them. While others were tasked with the critical path story content, we built up the revisitable exploration regions, side content, and the narrative missions focused on the player’s companions. As a senior level designer on this team, I was responsible for multiple narrative missions for two of the companions (Emmrich and Taash), two full levels from early development, as well as supporting across much of the other areas of the game. In addition, I worked to support my team as a mentor, sharing my experiences developing and shipping games, and my technical ability.

Some personal highlights from my time at BioWare include participating in the EA mentorship program and supporting a coworker in achieving her desired career change; becoming a direct manager for the first time; utilizing a free week to learn Frostbite’s animation tools well enough to create and deliver working prototypes of blueprints which were refined by technical designers and animators and used in the shipped game; contributing non-VO writing to exploration content in the Rivain Coast level; and the breadth of the game I was able to impact through my individual contributions and my work with other disciplines on things beyond my immediate role.

Responsibilities

• Senior designer on a team focused on building exploration spaces, companion-focused narrative missions, side quests, and non-linear exploration content
• Built all of the narrative, side, and exploration content for the Rivain Coast level, the main narrative missions for the Grand Necropolis Halls level, and contributed content to several other levels
• Maintained a close working relationship with my partners in other disciplines to develop, refine, and deliver on our goals. In particular I worked closely with our writing team on the narrative content I was responsible for, our level art team as we took the levels from concept and greyblock to realization, and our technical design team.
• Provided support and mentoring to other level designers, acting as a resource for technical problem solving, design feedback, and how to get through the process of shipping a game
• Was a direct manager to two reports, handling 1:1s, performance reviews, and career development feedback
• Worked with level design leadership and members of other disciplines on broader issues like level design processes, metagame progression, scoping and costing, and scripting standards.
• Worked with technical and metagame designers on designing reusable exploration mechanics and blueprints, creating prototypes, providing design feedback, and acting as a level design stakeholder.
• Played a large role in shipping the game both in supporting other designers and by taking on increased areas of responsibility for polishing, finalling, and bug fixing – particularly as the team was impacted by reassignments and layoffs.

rivain coast

As a sunny and tropical yet uninhabited wilderness space, the level presented some unique challenges and opportunities in development. Early concepts focused on the rugged coastline and littoral environment, along with reference gathered from the Azores, eastern Spain, and southern Italy for their rocky and volcanic coastlines. Player traversal became a major consideration when designing the level and verticality was used heavily to reinforce the environment and to create a different player experience from other levels in the game. One early iteration included a massive rock-climbing wall as we developed the rules and intention for player traversal across the game.

The lack of friendly NPCs posed a challenge when designing side content for the level, so environmental storytelling and discovery was heavily used. I wrote much of the non-VO text found in the level, working in collaboration with the writing team.

Reuse of space, player retraversal, and exploration were a major concern in the design of Rivain Coast. The level is home to two major story missions (The Dragon Slayer, and Lair of the Dragon King), two non-combat narrative missions (Fire on the Sands, and Words of Fire), as well as a number of optional side quests. Rewarding players for exploring by opening new paths and revealing new areas was important, and ensuring they were rewarded for returning to the level outside of main mission content.

Personal Highlights

• This level features a number of custom blueprints I built using the base functionalities provided by our technical design team to add unique flavour to the level and enhance player experience, The “bridge of bones” summoned by Lucanis, and the metal banner that Taash melts during Fire on the Sands are two of my favourites.
• The late-game quest “Kataranda the Stormrider” was added to the game very late in development and was an exercise in maximizing reuse of assets and minimizing scope cost to partner teams. While the dragon fight had been planned in the game all along, feedback eventually determined that the presentation and narrative around it was lacking. Working with my writing partner, we pitched a quest with minimal need for new assets that could be added to the game quickly and without major scope increase. Building new interaction prefabs myself, like the crow nests, meltable scrap piles, and the Deepstalker nests, was crucial to this and to creating a unique experience worthy of a moment like a major dragon boss fight.
• Environmental storytelling was important to me in finalling this level. Without NPCs or the inhabited spaces of other levels we had to find creative, scope-friendly ways to add interest and narrative to the level. The game’s healthy library of skeletons was helpful in this endeavour.

the grand necropolis

I took over the Grand Necropolis level near the completion of the greyblock phase and brought it to ship. I was responsible for all of the main mission content in the level, as well as supporting another level designer who built the side and exploration content through design feedback and technical support.

Where the Dead Must Go, the companion recruitment mission for Emmrich, was the primary focus of the level and my work. The mission has a heavy narrative element alongside the expected combat experiences, and throughout the process I collaborated closely with the mission writer to craft, iterate upon, and deliver those experiences. In building the mission I wanted to push the ways we could use an NPC, in this case Emmrich, to move through and act up on the environment instead of simply passively following the player. I worked extensively with the tech design team to design and develop our action station features, often being the initial customer and providing use cases and design feedback. Delivering on the writer’s vision of the notable narrative moments – Emmrich using necromancy to speak with the dead, and a vignette with a rescued captive in particular – was very important to me, and driving forward the technology was a key piece of that effort.

In addition to working with the core functionality of our NPC and exploration mechanics, I built or prototyped functional prefabs for other mission needs, from something as simple as brazier the player can light to the VFX-heavy red crystal chain prefabs seen in the climatic beat of the mission.

Alongside Where the Dead Must Go, the level featured two Emmrich-focused, narrative missions – Walking the Graves and Arrangements. As combat-free, dialogue-heavy experiences both of these missions became a complex scripting effort. In both cases I made efforts to push the interactivity of the NPCs in order to bring the experience to life and do justice to the memorable narrative created by the writing and cinematic teams. Although it is a background element, I am particularly proud of getting Emmrich’s skeleton companion Manfred walking around in the background of both missions and giving him small interactions with the player.

other levels

As a senior designer I provided support and design feedback for the early paper planning and greyblocking Treviso and Docktown, and for Arlathan Forest from that early phase through to shipping. In addition to design feedback, I provided more direct support to Arlathan forest through mission scripting and prefab construction review and feedback. I was also one of the primary level design collaborators with the metagame and systems designers, and was heavily involved in the loot progression and distribution work.

Arlathan Forest

I was responsible for The Forest of Spirits, the final mission in Bellara’s storyline and worked on it from initial paper design to shipping. Like the companion outing missions I built for Taash and Emmrich, this one focused on NPC interaction and non-combat gameplay to provide an interesting experience in an otherwise dialogue-focused mission. Of note are the magical braziers that Bellara lights during the mission, which I constructed to be a reusable puzzle element and have conditional visual states based on story choices in earlier missions.

I was very involved with advising on the missions Slaying the Fangscorcher and Through the Shadows, and eventually took them through the last stages of finalling and polish before shipping.

Treviso

Later in development, Treviso was identified as a level that needed more open-world exploration content, particularly in supporting the alternate states for the city based on player choices.  I took on the work of building a number of the side missions in the level. I also took on responsibility for finalling the Lucanis missions Bloodbath and A Murder of Crows.